“APPLES NEVER FALL” by Liane Moriarty

You would think that when you retire in your 70s, after forty years of marriage, four kids, and a good business, you will have a good life.

Joy and Stan (the main characters of Liane Moriarty’s latest novel “Apples never fall”) proved that if you do not communicate well in your forty years of marriage, you will not have a happy ever after retirement.

It was eye-opening to me how each spouse learned from their parents the way to behave:

“Joy regularly fantasized about doing what her father had done all those years ago: walk out the door to “see a friend” and never came back.
But walking out the door was never a real option. She was too necessary. Only she knew the children’s schedules, where everything was, the vet’s name, the doctor’s name, the teacher’s name.

But Stan could walk out without a moment thought.
Sometimes he simply left the room and that was fine. Normal people did that.
Sometimes he walked around the block and perhaps normal people did that too.
Sometimes he went for a drive and came back an hour later. Two hours later. Three. Four.
The longer he went, the less normal it became.
The longest time was five days.”

Joy’s mother, left by her husband while young, advises her on how to behave regarding Stan’s walkaways:

“Make sure you’re wearing lipstick and your nicest dress when he walks back in the door.
Don’t cry.
Don’t shout.
Don’t ask a single question about where he’s been.
Hold your head up high, and act as if you didn’t even notice he was gone.“

“She only broke her mother’s rule once.
It was late at night and she and Stan were in bed, the door shut, both still breathing heavily from sex.
–Why do you do that? she’d whispered into his chest. Disappear?Walk out?
–I can’t talk about it, he said. I’m sorry.
–It’s okay, she’d said, and it was okay, but it also wasn’t okay.”

And it was Stan’s father who taught him how to behave when a man’s temper makes an appearance. The wise came to Stan’s father after striking his wife:

“If you ever loose your temper with a woman or child, you must leave.
Walk out the door.
Don’t stop to think.
Don’t say a word.
Don’t come back until you’re calm again.
Just walk away.“

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

It takes a lot of work that you need to be willing to do for a marriage to resist:

“She loved the sport as much as he did, as much as he loved her, which was more than she would ever know.

They were better players together than apart.

Each time she fell out of love with him, he saw it happen and waited it out.

He never stopped loving her, even those times when he felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her, even in that bad year when they talked about separating, he’d just gone along with it, waiting for her to come back to him, thanking God and his dad up above each time she did.”

Kindle, 2021